RUSH: Knoxville, Tennessee, James, great to have you on the program. Hello, sir.
CALLER: It’s a pleasure to be on the program. Congratulations on your marriage.
RUSH: Thank you very much.
CALLER: Wonderful pictures on Facebook. But that’s not why I wanted to call. It’s the first time ever I made it through and I’m excited. You’re always an optimist, and I really appreciate that about you, but there’s one area that I heard you somewhat pessimistically dismiss the FairTax. It was created by economists, it would take a lot of the corruption out of politics because of the way they enact these laws that give special interest groups breaks in taxes. In a survey of foreign companies showed that 80% of foreign companies would build their next plant here if the FairTax were passed, and 20% would relocate entirely. I mean that’s jobs in the economy coming back, that’s taking all the political hacks and robbing them of their power, which is why that was where you were pessimistic. You were saying that it would never happen. And a lot of great ideas would have never happened if people didn’t stand up —
RUSH: Well, I can understand why you thought I said that. I said it would never happen with the current bunch of people in Congress.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: Let me expand on that, ’cause it relates to some of the things going on with some of these newcomers running for office. I did not criticize any of the particular tax plans, the FairTax, the flat tax, or whatever. What I said was that the idea that existing members of Congress would ever give up the kind of power they have using the current tax code is silly. They’re never gonna give that up. The only way to get rid of the current tax code is a clean sweep of Congress.
CALLER: And isn’t that what November can be?
RUSH: Well, November can be a start. But here’s one of the things that — let’s look at the Christine O’Donnell race versus Mike Castle.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: This is shaping up in the — let’s call it the conservative blogosphere on the Internet, some on talk radio, this is becoming quite a controversial race. And one of the reasons it’s becoming controversial is because there are some conservative people who do not want this O’Donnell woman anywhere near elective office because she’s either inexperienced or she’s got some baggage in her past or she filed suit against a think tank or something. And they say we much rather have a RINO, a Republican-in-name-only ’cause at least this guy is a professional. And we’ve had some people say, Sharron Angle out in Nevada, ‘Eh…’ Here’s the problem. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t sit there and say the current crop is our problem and then when others are inspired who have never been in this business before to seek office and then you cream ’em and you impugn them, you’re basically standing up to the status quo while criticizing it at the same time. One of the reasons this is important to me, it relates to your FairTax and fat tax, or whatever tax reform period.
CALLER: Specifically H.R. 52, the one that would require the repealment of the 16th Amendment that was written by, I believe, John Linder.
RUSH: John Linder, yeah, and Neal Boortz is big on that, helped with the book. But we’re in an era — look what’s happening politically. Independents, people who have paid scant attention to politics before are now involved. Young people are involved and what are they doing? They’re voting anti-Democrat. There is a golden opportunity to get rid of a lot of these professional politicians, ruling class types, both parties, who do not want any applecarts upset. So after years and years and years of conservatives complaining about — and being for term limits, we’ve been all for term limits and so forth, complaining about the career politician, okay, here come some people, and now we’re turning on them. We’re passing up a real opportunity here. I want to think of a better way to say this.
CALLER: But isn’t it the pundits that are, you know, pushing them to the side? It’s not the people —
RUSH: That’s what I mean. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Some of the pundits. Not all of them, but some of the pundits are. Yeah, pundit media type thing. You know, what you have here, you’ve got average ordinary Tea Party people. I mean these are the essence of the American citizenry. And they’re out there, they’re organizing and they’re rallying and they’re protesting and they’re voting. And they are solid conservatives. And we are now attracting millions of people who were not Republican and who were not involved. They’re being attracted to politics because they just abhor what the Democrats and Obama are doing. They see the future of the country going down the tubes, it’s being mortgaged, their kids and grandkids, so we have exactly what we’ve always wanted, new blood, new people getting involved, people that don’t care about politics finally getting involved on our side. And we do have some pundits who don’t want them involved now because they’re not sophisticated enough, not professional enough, or because they got baggage or what have you. And now some are telling us to turn our backs on them. And some are telling them, ‘We don’t want you. Yeah, we talked about how we don’t like the Democrats professional politicians, but, you know, we don’t want you unless you’re going to go to the establishment Republican Party,’ and so forth.
I have talked about this ever since Obama was immaculated because, remember, James, and everybody else, there have been lots of times — we’ll have to go to archives of this program and prove that while we’ve been talking and whining and complaining about Obama, we have problems in the Republican Party because a lot of Republicans don’t like all these new conservatives. They don’t, because of the social issues, they don’t want pro-lifers, they don’t want the moral majority of this kind of people involved. They don’t want people who are not part of the professional class. They don’t like Reagan. You know, Reagan was not an elite. They were embarrassed of him. But we have a great opportunity, everybody banging the drum.
So the way it correlates to you is, without naming any names, it is going to require a whole lot of fresh blood to reverse all this. And if you’re talking about implementing tax reform to the extent of your H.R.52, the FairTax or a flat tax of Steve Forbes, you’re going to need a whole bunch of new blood in there because the current crop is not going to willingly give up the power the tax code offers them. Think of the power you have, you’re on ways and means and then it comes time to vote for any tax policy up or down, you deal with lobbyists. I mean when you can determine something like mortgage interest being deductible, look at the power that gives you, look at who loves you, the homeowners industry loves you, the lending industry loves you, a lot of homeowners will love you. Imagine taking that away. You got a lot of enemies when you do that. But imagine the power that writing tax law has. It’s like asking a king to abdicate. They just don’t step down. You have to overthrow ’em.